Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 14th Feb 2006 22:25 UTC
"After using PC-BSD several days, I was impressed with how easy it is to use. It's a good desktop OS, and a great way to introduce BSD to new users. The 1.0 release has a few rough edges, but nothing that should scare off prospective users. For the future, I'd like to see something like Synaptic to manage PBI packages and allow users to browse for software without having to visit the PC-BSD Web site, and it would be nice if the site had a little more documentation, but I expect such things will come along in due time as the project matures."
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Member since:2006-01-01
Charles, Please try to find a way to turn of the anti-aliasing in FF and TB so when we make the fonts look like Windows they also work on FF. I don't know why it doesn't work anymore but I have done it before on a Linux ditsro. The only differnce was, I had to turn the byte-interpreter off manually and re-compile FreeType. In BSD it's already off as you mentioned once. I had fonts in FF look same as in Windows along with KDE and GNOME. I am not sure why it didn't work in BSD.
Edited 2006-02-15 12:12
RE[2]: A few details...
by Charles A Landemaine on Wed 15th Feb 2006 12:10
in reply to "RE: A few details..."
Member since:2005-11-11
Yes, we're working on it: http://www.pcbsd.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2737
If you ever find a solution, please tell us... This has been a real challenge lately... But early or late we'll find a solution! 
RE[2]: A few details...
by Charles A Landemaine on Wed 15th Feb 2006 12:32
in reply to "RE: A few details..."
Member since:2005-11-11
Actually, the Bytecode Interpreter is off in the former linux_base-7 that we used. Now we use linux_base-rh9 and it is enabled, but the problem is that all fonts are antialiased now. The bytecode interpreter needs to be turned on so that the antialiasing rules of fontconfig work properly though. This is the way it works on FreeBSD at least.
Member since:2005-09-10
I just wanted to add: take you time, there is really no point in rushing this. PC-BSD 1.0-Final, when released, should hit with a BANG, so in my opinion, it is better to try to work out even minor issues than releasing something that is rough around the edges. We have plenty of that kind of releases in linux-land, especially among desktop oriented distributions (Mandrake/driva, Kubuntu Breezy - the last one I tried - PC-BSD is already as good as these, but that is not good enough imho... we should do better )
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2005-11-11
You can have the same desktop with FreeBSD+KDE
Not exactly. PC-BSD is full of enhancements, utilities, custom configurations, etc... On FreeBSD you may need a few days to customize it to your liking, and still it won't have all the PC-BSD ease-of-use. FreeBSD is very rough around the hedges. PC-BSD is still, but a lot less
I don't understand why it takes so many months to finish 1.0, considering it's based on a current release of FreeBSD.
It's taking time because we're improving many features, and we're adding a lot of additional configurations, for instance, now fonts look just like on Windows with custom rules in fontconfig. Also we should have more than 50 different languages available for 1.0 release, we are fixing many minor annoyances, bugs, we're testing, etc... It takes a lot of time...
PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD but there is still a big difference between both of them. Making a server OS an easy-to-use desktop OS takes hell of a time.
Also, we're a very small team of devs ATM.
If you want to join us and help out, you're mostly welcome